Gran Turismo Needs to Steal Good Ideas

[uMayBeSeated]

I have played Gran Turismo since the beginning of the franchise (although I was a little kid for the first few releases). Gran Turismo to me has always been the top dog of console racing games. But they really need to take great ideas from other franchises and incorporate their own versions into Gran Turismo to keep Gran Turismo at the top and make it even bigger… for example…

Open Class (PP Brackets) Ranked Racing - Forza Motorsport has a plethora of issues and the physics/tuning are broken beyond belief, but the fact that you have 600+ cars and can go into ranked lobbies with whatever car you want in whatever class/pp bracket you want to race with whenever you want, is just miles better than 3 “daily” races per week. Gran Turismo desperately needs this in Sport Mode.

Sport Mode Track Rotations - still on the Sport Mode topic of “daily races” staying on the same track or 3 tracks for a whole week is very stale. Once again Forza does a better job here. Not a Forza hype man (the game has more critical game breaking issues than positives) but they really do nail quality of life features. The ranked lobbies literally rotate from track to track every 20 minutes or so. You qualify before the race, race, and then go to a new track right after. If you don’t like the next track, you can back out and check the other classes and see what tracks are upcoming for the next hour in each class and choose the ones you want to do. GT needs more rotation… staying on the same track or 3 tracks for a week is just not sustainable.

Leaderboards/Variety - At this point I probably do look like a Forza hype man lol but once again they nail it with Rivals Leaderboards. They have 9 Classes of Cars with 100s of cars per Class to choose and fight for Hot Lap, Time Trial Leaderboards on every single track/track layout. These Leaderboards allow Open Tuning as well. You get to see every single lap on the leaderboard even if it’s 50,000 people. It shows you the replay for all, and your position on the board, your friends, and your % top players (like if you are 100 out of 1000 it would say you are top 10%). It’s cool to compete with yourself, friends, or the world in the cars you love, on the tracks you love. Circuit Experience is about all the leaderboards we get in Gran Turismo… it’s not even all the track layouts in the game to start with. It’s all one make stuff with some pretty awful car choices on a few of them. And no tuning allowed… The no tuning has it’s pros and cons but I lean towards open cars and open tuning at the end of the day. It is so fun to build a road car from scratch that fits your driving style and then compete with it against friends/leaderboards.

I genuinely feel like all of these features need to be in GT8 if not added to GT7…

Anyone else?

 

[TurismoTalker]

I genuinely feel like all of these features need to be in GT8 if not added to GT7…

In my opinion, they're all good ideas, although I don't think they should be literally copied, but rather interpreted more in the Gran Turismo style, which would certainly make it better, at least better than Forza. From what I can deduce, it's a server minority issue; they simply can't afford it, given the current gameplay mechanics. It would create dozens of categories with widespread overcrowding, which in my opinion they would struggle to manage. I played FH5 and can confirm that, although greatly simplified, Rivals were also very interesting. The huge problem with online, in my opinion, was cheaters, and they don't exist in Gran Turismo, so it would actually be a nice addition to Gran Turismo, but I see it as difficult to implement, even if I wanted to be positive.

they really need to take great ideas from other franchises and incorporate their own versions into Gran Turismo to keep Gran Turismo at the top and make it even bigger…

That’s facts

 

[Nakano219]

Forza and GT are not the same game and do not have the same playerbase. The same thing that works for one may not work for the other.

The established population of Sport Mode never really bothers the one or two times a year PD put a tuning race up. To be honest, even just allowing suspension tuning for race cars generally didn't go down well, which is why PD stopped doing it. It's also not the biggest fan of road cars in general - all the biggest Daily As will be racing car one-makes (or adjacent things like the Radical). If you suddenly go "here are five permanent lobbies for 400/500/600/700/800 PP racing", what would probably happen is people would ignore them and stay racing Gr.3 all day, because that's what the Sport Mode audience wants to do and has been doing for a decade (and why the cries for new GT3 cars are so loud compared to other classes).

Not to mention that PP is heavily exploitable and always has been.

 

[Famine]

These seem like... suggestions. Of features... 🤔

 

[TurismoTalker]

It's also not the biggest fan of road cars in general

I think the community is large; Gran Turismo has always had a particular focus on road cars, which only stopped with GT Sport. Many players use Sport mode more frequently simply because it's the only one.

 

[ArronWestley]

I have played Gran Turismo since the beginning of the franchise (although I was a little kid for the first few releases). Gran Turismo to me has always been the top dog of console racing games. But they really need to take great ideas from other franchises and incorporate their own versions into Gran Turismo to keep Gran Turismo at the top and make it even bigger…

Forza Motorsport isn't really a threat, it's dying an ugly death. Gran Turismo is really the only game of its kind with a future these days.

In Forza you may pick from hundreds of cars, yes... but only a handful are competitive, because the PI system, like the PP system from GT, is very easy to exploit. So opening up to all cars ironically restricts players rather than give them freedom.

The games that actually threaten Gran Turismo when it comes to the Sport Mode are all sims, and the audience of Sport Mode is closer to what you would find in a sim (they want balanced competitive racing).

 

[05XR8]

Well, PD have been on the right track with the Custom Race feature. I’m not sure if they looked at how other games designed similar features, but it’s done wonders for GT7 replayability.

What the OP describes, I’m not sure PD would come close to thinking about that. Look how long the custom race feature took to be implemented. PD probably felt Arcade Mode was good enough(though I haven’t read about why Kaz felt it was time to add the custom Race feature after 25 years).

 

[ArronWestley]

Well, PD have been on the right track with the Custom Race feature. I’m not sure if they looked at how other games designed similar features, but it’s done wonders for GT7 replayability.

What the OP describes, I’m not sure PD would come close to thinking about that. Look how long the custom race feature took to be implemented. PD probably felt Arcade Mode was good enough(though I haven’t read about why Kaz felt it was time to add the custom Race feature after 25 years).

There was Custom Race in GTS, so 20 years. But only in GT7 there are features like "Select from Garage".

 

[uMayBeSeated]

I don’t want Gran Turismo to become Forza Motorsport by any means. Gran Turismo just has untapped potential. Sport Mode is too stale and repetitive. We get no variety whatsoever to choose from and 95% of the cars sit around unable to be used.

Leaderboards are also in the game already, just in a limited capacity that they could expand on.

 

[hyperspeed980]

The established population of Sport Mode never really bothers the one or two times a year PD put a tuning race up. To be honest, even just allowing suspension tuning for race cars generally didn't go down well, which is why PD stopped doing it. It's also not the biggest fan of road cars in general - all the biggest Daily As will be racing car one-makes (or adjacent things like the Radical). If you suddenly go "here are five permanent lobbies for 400/500/600/700/800 PP racing", what would probably happen is people would ignore them and stay racing Gr.3 all day, because that's what the Sport Mode audience wants to do and has been doing for a decade (and why the cries for new GT3 cars are so loud compared to other classes).

Yeah, that's what happens when you slowly wean a playerbase into thinking grouped races are the only races that matter over the course of eight years. If GT8 manages to reverse the tide as many have been suspecting, you'll be sure to see the other side of the fanbase coming back in droves.

 

[MisterWaffles]

The rotating track list in the hoppers every 20 minutes might be great for the Forza audience, but the GT audience likes and is accustomed to having one track a week per race to focus on, qualify for, improve at and execute on. The racing in GT gets better over the week because towards the end, people are practiced up and have run the race more than once. Forza doesn't have that same focus in its online events.

Of course I'm talking in the context of people who actually care. There are shameful rammers in both games and it doesn't matter if the track's been there for 20 minutes or a whole week, they'll still ram you. But in Forza genuine accidents are much more common because of how unpracticed people are jumping between random tracks every 20 minutes.

 

[uMayBeSeated]

The rotating track list in the hoppers every 20 minutes might be great for the Forza audience, but the GT audience likes and is accustomed to having one track a week per race to focus on, qualify for, improve at and execute on. The racing in GT gets better over the week because towards the end, people are practiced up and have run the race more than once. Forza doesn't have that same focus in its online events.

Well Sport Mode is like 5-10% of the player base of GT so I feel like GT Players also don’t like it. I am not sure who the target audience is for stale repetition. I think it’s just the case that it’s been the normal for so long now in GT that most of the ones still grinding it, are doing it because it’s the only option. GTWS is for the ones who want to practice the same event for many days and then compete after the dedicated practice. That’s just my take on it.

 

[MisterWaffles]

Well Sport Mode is like 5-10% of the player base of GT so I feel like GT Players also don’t like it. I am not sure who the target audience is for stale repetition. I think it’s just the case that it’s been the normal for so long now in GT that most of the ones still grinding it, are doing it because it’s the only option. GTWS is for the ones who want to practice the same event for many days and then compete after the dedicated practice. That’s just my take on it.

Not everyone wants to be committed to a whole championship to get that same dedicated event structure in their online mode. I think GT's Sport Mode is a good balance between a full esports championship like the GTWS and the very casual ranked hoppers Forza has going on.

Also, even if the Sport Mode playerbase is only 10% or less, there's still a decently sized and dedicated community surrounding it, I wonder what Forza's metrics are of players who enter the hoppers versus the entire playerbase, whether it's higher or similar to GT's online player counts.

 

[TurismoTalker]

I think GT's Sport Mode is a good balance between a full esports championship like the GTWS and the very casual ranked hoppers Forza has going on.

I disagree; there's no compromise. Competitive players literally own the game. Casual players are thrown into multiplayer lobbies. You can't let me get away with one race a week, sometimes a single-brand race, as a compromise. I mean, rightly so, because the mode is literally called Sport mode and encompasses the game's competitive mode, and it's fine as it is in my opinion, with some improvements to be made, but nothing to complain about. I think a different reasoning could be made: Gran Turismo has less interest in the online aspect than non-competitive players. Multiplayer could represent a turning point for MOST players. Sport mode is currently the only mode that keeps the game alive, because there's an active competitive community. But I ask you, if there were an online mode dedicated to drifting, for example, wouldn't there be an active community dedicated to that mode? Of course, because it would encompass a niche of active players of an online mode, like Sport mode. In all latest racing game the "career" dies after a short while, and the only way to advance in the game is by competing against other players. It's a shame that this sort of "advancement" is only available in the competitive mode (GR3,GR4), Forza is really ridiculous in my opinion, but it gives different types of players the opportunity to challenge each other, in different modes. There are countless reasons why most Gran Turismo players get lost over time, and one of them is the lack of ways to compete against other players.